1913: The Panama Canal is effectively completed as President Woodrow Wilson sends a signal from the White House by telegraph, setting off explosives that destroy a section of the Gamboa dike.

1957: President Dwight D. Eisenhower apologizes to the finance minister of Ghana, Komla Agbeli Gbdemah, after the official is refused seating in a Howard Johnson’s restaurant near Dover, Del.

1962: President John F. Kennedy, responding to the Thalidomide birth defects crisis, signs an amendment to the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act requiring pharmaceutical companies to prove that their products are safe and effective prior to marketing.

1985: U.S. fighter jets force an Egyptian plane carrying the hijackers of the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro to land in Italy, where the gunmen are taken into custody.

VINDICATOR FILES

1987: Atty. Althea T.L. Simmons, chief lobbyist for the NAACP, tells a crowd of 800 at the Youngstown chapter’s Freedom Fund Banquet at the Mahoning Country Club that Judge Robert Bork will be denied confirmation as a justice on the Supreme Court.

Dominic Coloutes, a former Poland resident who is a policeman in Pinellas Park, Fla., is wounded in the hand when two men in a parked car open fire as he approached them. Coloutes returned fire, wounding both men, who were wanted in connection with two bank robberies.

1972: The Most Rev. James W. Malone, bishop of the Youngstown Diocese, is being treated for malignant growth in the stomach in St. Elizabeth Hospital.

1962: The 14-room Fifth Avenue home of bondsman Mario Guerrieri is gutted by the area’s 81st and most tremendous bombing. The home at Fifth and Crandall avenues was being remodeled after being damaged by a mysterious fire in December.

1937: Harold E. Snell is the new commander of the Mahoning Post 93, Veterans of Foreign Wars.

Dr. Romeo Montecchi of Cleveland, royal Italian consul for Ohio and Kentucky, is the main speaker for the 445th anniversary of Columbus’ discovery of America at the Abruzzi-Colombo hall in Youngstown.